CNet:

Two Harvard researchers have concluded that there’s no data to support the notion that violent video games cause the kids who play them to act out violence in real life, contrary to the vast majority of media outlets that would have the public thinking otherwise. The $1.5 million study, which began in 2004, closely examined 1,200 children after bouts with violent games like Grand Theft Auto and not-so-violent titles like The Sims.

Psychologists Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson found that for most kids, playing these games was nothing more than a stress reliever… Some researchers, including the Harvard psychologists, even suggest that video games have a positive effect on the brain.

Kutner and Olson have written a book, Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games, which they discussed recently on On The Media:
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It’s been kind of a geeky day for me so I thought it appropriate that I close it out with this one…

You really can design serious games for positive social change. And there’s a non-profit that’s all about helping folks do that. It’s Games for Change.

Cory Doctorow quotes Eleanor on G4C:

Games for Change, the non-profit devoted to promoting, well, games for change, will hold their fifth annual festival in New York City from June 2-4. Keynote speakers are Henry Jenkins and Jim Gee and the closing keynote is the Honorable Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The first day of the festival will be a free, one-day workshop. The recipient of a MacArthur grant, the workshop is a soup-to-nuts tutorial for non-profits, covering everything from why you’d make a game for change, to design, and through funding and press strategies. While the workshop is free, seating is limited and those who wish to attend must fill out a simple online application.  [link]

Thanks, Alex!

The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader in exile, said in India that protests in Tibet contradicted the Chinese “propaganda” about people there enjoying a prosperous and contented life and made it clear that the issue “can no longer be neglected”. While in London the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games torch relay was reduced to “farce and ignominy” yesterday as ugly scenes of protest disrupted this leg of the tour that was billed as a journey of harmony and peace.

The Times of London reports that more than 35 protesters were arrested in a series of clashes with the police, who had to reroute part of the procession to protect the 80 runners. “Despite nearly a year of planning and the deployment of 2,000 officers, the Metropolitan Police were unable to stop protesters breaking through the security cordon at vulnerable points.

“In West London the torch was nearly taken from Konnie Huq, a former Blue Peter presenter. Two demonstrators tried to douse the flame with a fire extinguisher near Ladbroke Grove, and the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell jumped in front of a relay bus in Oxford Street. The torch was diverted from foot to a bus at St Paul’s to avoid trouble.”

More here…

Meanwhile in India the Dalai Lama demanded a probe into the unrest in Tibet by an “independent and respected international body”. More here…

A report from Beijing says that 10 people were wounded when Chinese paramilitary police opened fire on a crowd of Tibetans protesting against limits on a prayer ceremony and demanding the return of the Dalai Lama, witnesses said. “The violence was in a remote town in western Sichuan province on Saturday, where monks at the Lingque temple had been joined by several hundred pilgrims for an annual ceremony, the Torgya, which is meant to exorcise evil elements from society.”

More here…

Indianapolis Star:

The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers knows how to make a hamburger.

Before a crowd of more than 1,500 people Saturday in the Purdue University Armory, the team came away with first prize in the 2008 national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.
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The Purdue engineers beat six other teams from colleges across the country, including last year’s champions from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich., in a hamburger-making competition.

The annual event challenges university teams to come up with machines to perform simple tasks in as many steps as possible. This year’s goal was to assemble a hamburger — with at least one precooked patty, two vegetables and two condiments — sandwiched between two buns.

AND

Each machine in Saturday’s competition had to use at least 20 steps in making the hamburger. Purdue’s machine took 156 steps.

Patrick Chappatte, The International Herald Tribune

Cricket is not only the most popular sport in the Indian subcontinent, it has now turned into a global money-spinner. And now communist China which had banned the game, describing it as a pursuit of imperialist lackeys, is turning to India and Pakistan to gain proficiency in the sport.

“A first consignment of bats, balls and other paraphernalia will be sent to China in a month or two, according to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI),” reports The Times of London.

“To help Chinese youngsters to pick their doosras from their googlies — and even their chinamen — India plans to send coaches from the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore, accompanied by umpires and groundsmen. ‘China has already taken to cricket at the schools level in a big way,’ a BCCI spokesman said. ‘It’s time to support a blossoming love of the game’.”

More here…

(Sign of the Apolcalypse #52 at The Reaction.)

We all have our fantasies, even our fantasy worlds, worlds that allow us to be true to ourselves, for good or bad, or neither. Put another way, we all have dreams, dreams about ourselves, ideal images of ourselves, self-constructs. Society requires one to be many things, to wear many masks, to play many roles, some fulfilling, some not, or not so much, but even the happiest person, even the most self-aware, finding happiness in genuine self-awareness, in knowing oneself, cannot but fall short of the ideal. (Even Socrates must have had his doubts and disappointments, and, yes, his fantasies.) And this is especially true, I think, in our age of the deification of the self, an age in which the self is celebrated, in which freedom reigns, in which individuals, in our more progressive societies, are able to “find” themselves in so many different ways, an age in which choice is supreme, an age in which choices can be made, and are made, for the greater glorification of the self.

Okay, enough of that.

My point is that freedom and choice do not necessarily make for happiness, and many people today are living lives that seem, in one way or another, meaningless, which is to say, devoid of meaning, even pointless. You get up, you commute, you sit in a cubicle, your boss yells at you, you play office politics, you count the seconds, you drink, you narcotize yourself. You’re stuck in a crappy job, a dead-end career, a broken family. You’re in debt, massive debt, and you worry about retirement, if you sober up enough to think about anything at all.

Yup, it’s pretty bleak out there, and wherever you are right now.

Quite probably, it’s pretty bleak in your soul, too.

So go ahead and fantasize. Go find yourself.

Just don’t hurt anyone.

**********

Which brings me to this: LARPing.

Do you know what that stands for? I didn’t, and I’d never even heard about it before I read this review of a documentary on LARPing by Grady Hendrix at Slate.

So what does it stand for? Well, here you go:

Darkon is a LARP (live-action role-playing game) where normal people dress up in homemade armor and pretend to be inhabitants of a fantasy realm. They fight battles in parks and on soccer fields over pretend land in a pretend country that has its own pretend religions and pretend economy. It’s meatspace Dungeons & Dragons, with people brandishing swords wrapped in foam and slamming each other around with padded shields. Founded in 1985, Darkon is one of America’s oldest and largest LARPs, and the showdown between two kingdoms within it, Mordom and Laconia, was captured in the documentary Darkon, a movie so mighty it needed two directors (Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer). The film… joins the ranks of movies like Hoop Dreams and Murderball as one of the great documentary dissections of how Americans play.

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